Gut check: 7 PPC metrics to review on schedule

Gut check: 7 PPC metrics to review on schedule

One complication of working in the age of big data is winnowing down the vast expanse of available information to the data that directly applies to your specific marketing strategy.

That’s particularly true in the pay-per-call industry where the variety of call center metrics available through advanced technology and more old-school methods can be somewhat overwhelming. Still, 83 percent of client-side marketers believe data-guided decisions are the most important skill their team can have, according to a recent study. And the first-party customer data that comes from cookies, website analytics platforms, CRM systems and other business analysis tools can be invaluable to your strategy.

Here’s a handy guide for how to spend less than an hour a day tracking your most relevant PPC numbers so you can continually adjust your campaign.

  1. First-call resolution (FCR): This data category tracks the percentage of incoming calls in which the customer’s goal is fully addressed during the first call. A 1 percent improvement in FCR correlates to a 1 percent improvement in customer satisfaction, according to a study on FCR effectiveness. But right now, only 48 percent of incoming calls to call centers in North America are resolved the first time, it reports, and customer satisfaction drops 15 percent with each successive call. Call centers ranked “world class” in customer satisfaction logged average FCR ratings of 86 percent. When you track this metric, analysts recommend ensuring that customers confirm that their goals have been resolved.
  2. Response time: This number represents the number of calls answered in a given amount of time defined by a company’s service goals. It’s a good indication of how well your call center is meeting basic service objectives, though you should still track conversions and other measures of staffer success.
  3. “Billable” hours: This represents the percentage of each agent’s shift he’s actually fielding calls, a ratio typically pre-determined at 85 to 90 percent. Fine tuning that number keeps other measures of success from being skewed due to employee time spent on breaks or in other functions. However, to tell the real story the number should be used in conjunction with other telling metrics like average call interval and calls handled per hour.
  4. Accuracy of forecasting: How well do your actual call numbers match up to projected numbers? Being significantly off on your estimates could lead to burned-out agents, overly long hold times or wasteful overstaffing.
  5. Use of self-service functions: If you’ve incorporated interactive web apps or other functions aimed at assisting customers, are your customers actually using them on their own? Do system glitches act as sales barriers?
  6. Quality of contacts with customers: While many elements of this category are quantifiable via surveys or ACD-based call coding, others require the recording and monitoring of agent interactions with customers. Depending on your goals, criteria might include adherence to script; whether key customer data is collected; whether appropriate information was provided and whether data entry was accurate.
  7. Customer satisfaction: This one’s a no brainer, since it ties so closely to revenues. It’s generally measured through post-call surveys combined with IVR survey apps that recognize and note low rankings.

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